Mr. Sanders,

This is in response to your recent article titled "Bernie Sanders: As Trump meets with India’s Modi, a reminder to put human rights at center of U.S. foreign policy written before the Howdy Modi event in Houston." published in The Houston Chronicle on September 22, 2019.

This article was generally attacking India, but had one sentence from you as a pathetic attempt at neutrality:

"To be clear, Pakistan has also often played a bad role in Kashmir.”

That is all? Just one sentence for the years of terror Pakistan has imported into India causing 13 synchronized bombings in India's financial capital Mumbai in 1993, another round of a dozen bombs in 2008, bombing of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai killing innocents, attack on the Indian parliament, making sleeper cells in Kashmir, promoting radicalization in Kashmir leading to ethnic cleansing of Hindus, leading them to live in exile for the last 30+ years? Leading India to spend billions in national security just to keep Pakistan at bay at the border? I am sure you are not a Holocaust denier, Mr. Sanders - you seem strangely oblivious to the genocide of minorities in Kashmir.

Mr. Sanders, you conflate the Kashmir situation to Trump's treatment of Muslims in the USA. You mislead your supporters in the US, who know the Kashmir situation only from media reports - many of them biased - using this false analogy. While it is sad and wrong that Trump is painting all Muslims with a broad brush, the Kashmir situation is complex and cannot be compared to Trump's treatment of Muslims. In Kashmir, It is an ethnic cleansing perpetrated by a radicalized Muslim population on the minorities - Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists living there. It is a Muslim population that purged its minorities and is in cahoots with India's rival Pakistan.

I remember a time - in the 70s and 80s - when Kashmir was the backdrop of many Indian movies. I have looked in wonder at Dal Lake and the breathtaking rivers and valleys portrayed in those films. Visiting beautiful Kashmir has been the dream of many an Indian.

Things began to change slowly with Sheikh Abdullah, the then Chief Minister of the state, starting the Islamization of the state by renaming 2500 villages that had Hindu names to Islamic names.

Please read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_of_Kashmiri_Hindus

Local Shia and Sufi Muslims were radicalized by the gradual spread of Wahhabi Islam, rampant corruption by two ruling families - the Abdullahs and the Muftis - who despite India giving 20% of its funds to Kashmir did not do much to improve the state of the local Kashmiris. These families were also allegedly hand in glove with terrorist outfits like the JKLF. There are many nuanced articles on why peaceful Kashmir which was the setting for many romantic films in the seventies got to the state where Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs were butchered, raped, and forcibly evicted in the early 1990s. Please read a few of them to get perspective on the history of Kashmir. Educating oneself will go a long way, especially when you are aspiring to the highest post of my adopted country and seeking our votes.

When Muslims are oppressed based on their religion - anywhere in the world, there is a huge Muslim Ummah to speak on their behalf. There is an international Muslim community giving them support, gathering support from oil-rich nations, writing articles in the media (many of which are owned/funded by oil-rich nations), lobbying America with oil money.

Then it becomes fashionable for politicians like Bernie Sanders to jump on that bandwagon and kick off his campaign at an event organized by the Islamic Society of North America. Do you, Mr. Sanders, understand the signal you are sending to exiled Kashmiri minorities and the Indian Diaspora by kicking off your campaign at an ISNA event, having a Pakistani American as a campaign manager, and speaking against India in the said event?

The sad thing about Hindus being oppressed is that there is no international community to speak for them. Even the Hindu-born western-educated media writers don't find it fashionable to write on behalf of oppressed, exiled Kashmiri Hindus. Nobody lobbies for them with foreign countries that can then assert diplomatic pressure. Hindus do not have oil money to buy all these eloquent and expensive writers in the western media. Hindus also are fighting the legacy of an education system left by their British colonizers that strives to make Hindus ashamed of their own Hindu identity.

The only people to speak for exiled Kashmiri Hindus is a small group of other Hindus - who are not organized enough to speak, and then the minute they speak they are hit with labels like "Islamophobia", "Nazi", "Nationalist" and shut down. No one hears their piece or their voice. 

Mr. Sanders: You speak of your family of Polish origin being exiled by the Nazis. You should then feel the pain of the Kashmiri minorities who were killed and purged, shouldn't you?

Given that the Kashmir issue had been with the UN for 70+ years unresolved, and the subsequent Indian governments lacked the political will to do anything about it, and Pakistan was repeatedly pumping terrorists into the region from across the border, starting three wars and the recent attack in Pulwama, the Indian government of Narendra Modi took the step of attempting to bring normalcy to Kashmir.

It is a difficult problem to solve, given the long history and many players - the local people who bowed to the terrorists demands either out of fear or out of support for the terrorists, the cross-border infiltration, Pakistan's ISI and army launching attacks, a common religion with Pakistan that formed a bond and fostered radicalization, the terrorist outfits in the area, sleeper cells of terrorists, and many other issues we do not know about. I do not claim to know what is happening there.

No one really knows what is happening. There are no unbiased articles on the same. Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan claims that ”millions" are under lock down - which, given that it is coming from Pakistan - is also not a reliable claim.

Living in a heavily militarized region is terrible. It is terrible to be a civilian in Kashmir right now. The lack of communication, the curfews, the heavy militarization, the lock down - it hurts. Several world media write about lifting the communication ban and wonder why it is needed. I am not a political person and do not claim to know why. Perhaps - this is just conjecture - when there is no idea of who could be an enemy spy in a hotbed of terrorism, no way of knowing where a sleeper cell of terrorists may exist, a communication ban might solve the problem of local people acting as spies for Pakistan and terrorist outfits and relaying messages that could compromise national security.

Undoubtedly, this imposes hardships for the local people. Several thousand people are affected, civilians who did not want conflict. In a war zone, several rules that apply during peacetime are temporarily abandoned as the problem is being resolved. Decades of terrorism needs to be halted and neutralized before the problem can be resolved.

I hope and pray that normalcy is restored and Kashmir can be the paradise it once was - a beautiful area that formed the backdrop of several films - Indian and foreign. Where people of all religions can live unmolested and as one community. Where radicalization is replaced by an enlightened populace who treat religion as something to be practiced in private, and not forced down the throats of others at gunpoint nor something to kill or die for.

Mr. Sanders, I recommend that you read the entire history of Kashmir, and educate yourself. You will understand why your speech alienated many like me and turned off your erstwhile Indian American voters and supporters.